Modern retail stores sell a wide variety of items, including foodstuffs, home and kitchen goods, electronic goods, clothing, sporting goods and so on. Typically, the items are displayed on shelves or other display units to be selected by customers and taken to a point of sale or checkout to be purchased. The display units are then replenished with new stock by staff, employees, or the like of the retail store, which is delivered to the store via a supply chain or held in reserve at the store.
It is desirable for a grocery retail store to offer samples of food products to customers, so that the customer can taste and enjoy a new food product prior to purchase. The retailer may work closely with their suppliers and manufacturers in order to promote certain products in a particular retail store on a particular day. These tasting events are typically relatively short-lived and frequently change from one product to another. Therefore, a temporary kiosk or stand may be set up at a prominent location in a store to display the products to be sampled. The sampling stand may be disassembled or removed when not in use.
There are several design issues to be considered in relation to the sampling stand. When offering food products, the sampling stand has to maintain excellent standards of hygiene. The stand should be robust and durable, and maintain an attractive appearance even after being used many times for different promotions. Typically, the stand will carry signage or other display materials appropriate to the current promotion, which are temporarily affixed to the stand and are replaced after use in the current promotion or event.
It is an aim of the present invention to address at least some of the above difficulties, or other difficulties as will be appreciated from the description herein. Some examples described herein may aim to provide an improved sampling stand and method of operating such as sampling stand.